Passion Pays. Up in the air

There is nothing like a good adventure sport when you want to take a break from work and leave office behind. In India, the options include paragliding, provided you have the time and inclination.

First, get the misconceptions out of the way. Paragliding is often confused with parasailing. The two are quite different. Parasailing is not an adventure sport; it is a ride you can take on beaches, where you are tied to a parachute and pulled by a boat. Paragliding is also different from hang gliding and is a more advanced form of flying. Few people in India take to paragliding. Having said what it’s not, let’s get to what it is.

A paraglider is a boomerang shaped light weight fabric wing, to which the pilot attaches himself via a harness. You need to take off from a hill and land on the ground, or on the hill itself if your skills are good enough for that. Another point: I am talking here of solo flights. There is something called a ‘tandem’ flight, where there are two harnesses.

This is designed for an experienced pilot to give joy rides. Before you make up your mind to actually learn this sport, it may be a good idea to try a tandem, but doing only a tandem is not what we are talking about here.

As a true adventure sport lover, you will want to experience what is called ‘solo’ flying. Having done well over a 100 solos, let me tell you, it is every bit worth it and more.

Paragliding is proper flying, where depending on conditions and your skill level, you can get long flights, stretching into one or more hours. Whether it is 5 minute flight, or 2 hours, a good solo flight is the most amazing experience. Beyond time in air, a pilot aims for height: How high can you go above take-off. In good conditions, people have gone even 10,000 feet above take-off. Another goal can be to cover distance, which is called doing a cross country. While most of us casual pilots are happy to hang around near the hill of take-off, in good conditions, experienced pilots often try going cross country, sometimes even as much as 100 km or more from point of take-off.

Solo is the way to go, and you need to learn it at a paragliding school. There are several in India now. Given the nature of the sport, these schools are in places where there are hills. Maharashtra has a few schools in hills around Lonavla, Pune and Mahabaleshwar. There are others in Goa and Himachal. I had the good fortune of learning from a non-commercial lover of flying around 15 years ago.

The current crop of schools, which has all come up in the last 10-12 years, have now evolved into more commercial packages. Most of them run several programmes to cater to differing skill levels, a typical package being beginners, intermediate and advanced.

A beginner’s course could be three days, giving you an introduction into the basics of flying, some ground handling and three to five short flights. Courses are typically residential; most flying schools tend to run associated guest houses. Most learners will need at least 30 flights before they can be trusted to fly alone, without supervision. This means you need to do at least three courses, which could cost around ₹75,000 to ₹1 lakh.

Note, paragliding is not a sport which comes under any government guideline at the moment. So, at what point you are a solo pilot is really your call. Your instructor will have his views, and while you are doing a course, he will monitor you.

But at some point, if you want to continue with the sport, you can buy your own gear, and fly on your own, without instruction.

While training, and certainly when you decide to go solo, an acute awareness of safety is vital in paragliding. In fact, the first thing a good instructor should do is drum the need for safety into your head.

The danger quotient in this sport is fairly high; suffice to say, paragliding is a true adventure sport. It is certainly less scary than sky diving or base jumping, but every trainee gets hurt.

Getting dragged and getting cuts and bruises are common. The probability of breaking a bone is as high as 35-50 per cent. I have been lucky not to suffer a documented fracture, but have had a few close shaves.

Most injuries happen at take-off, that’s when you are bringing the glider up. And, if your skills are not good enough, you can get dragged and pulled if winds are strong. Since you are on a hill, you will graze stones, or occasionally smack a rock. What you don’t want is an accident in the air. That’s when fatalities occur. This is one sport in which there can be an occasional fatality.

Good pilots naturally try their skills in rough conditions and, sometimes, nature wins. The more scary air accident, and which you should avoid, is when two gliders collide.

That will happen if one or more pilots is a rookie, flying without supervision. I was witness to one such. Once I was flying, and at some point I felt that there were too many gliders up in the air. I decided to get out. Fifteen minutes after I landed, 2 gliders collided, one pilot could not be saved. It appears both were relatively new to flying.

By this time, I have either scared you, or excited you. If it is the latter, then go for it.

A good flight is the most amazing feeling. Also, paragliding is a complete outdoor experience: the drive to the flying side, the climb, waiting for the right conditions, and then finally the flight — all this will take the better part of the day, and you will be out with unspoilt mother nature.

It does not require high levels of physical fitness. There are guys nearing 60 and still flying. The trick is to focus on safe flying. Do not try to imitate a better pilot, and with some luck, you can fly well into your twilight years.

The writer is a passionate paraglider and partner at Wisdomsmith Advisors LLP